The Texans dethroned the two-time champion Oilers, 20—17, in a double- overtime contest that was, at the time, professional football's longest-ever game.

In , the Texans became the second AFL team to relocate. Lamar Hunt felt that despite winning the league championship in , the Texans could not succeed financially competing in the same market as the Dallas Cowboys , which entered the NFL as an expansion franchise in Kansas City mayor Harold Roe Bartle nicknamed "Chief" was instrumental in his city's success in attracting the team.

Rozelle declined the offer; however, the game would be instituted three seasons later. A series of events throughout the next few years demonstrated the AFL's ability to achieve a greater level of equality with the NFL.

Sayers eventually signed with the Bears. It was the highest amount of money ever paid to a collegiate football player, and is cited as the strongest contributing factor to the eventual merger between the two leagues.

After the season, the Newark Bears of the Atlantic Coast Football League expressed interest in joining the AFL; [29] concerns over having to split the New York metro area with the still-uncertain Jets were a factor in the Bears bid being rejected.

In , Milwaukee officials tried to lure an expansion team to play at Milwaukee County Stadium where the Green Bay Packers had played parts of their home schedule after an unsuccessful attempt to lure the Packers there full-time, but Packers head coach Vince Lombardi invoked the team's exclusive lease as well as sign an extension to keep some home games in Milwaukee until League expansion was approved at a meeting held on June 7, and on August 16 the AFL's ninth franchise was officially awarded to Robbie and television star Danny Thomas.

His successor was Oakland Raiders head coach and general manager Al Davis , who had been instrumental in turning around the fortunes of that franchise.

Davis's strategy focused on quarterbacks in particular, and in two months he persuaded seven NFL quarterbacks to sign with the AFL. Alarmed with the rate of spending in the league, Hilton Hotels forced Barron Hilton to relinquish his stake in the Chargers as a condition of maintaining his leadership role with the hotel chain.

They held a series of secret meetings in Dallas to discuss their concerns over rapidly increasing player salaries, as well as the practice of player poaching.

Hunt and Schramm completed the basic groundwork for a merger of the two leagues by the end of May, and on June 8, , the merger was officially announced.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two leagues would hold a common player draft. The agreement also called for a title game to be played between the champions of the respective leagues.

The two leagues would be fully merged by , NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle would remain as commissioner of the merged league, which would be named the NFL.

Additional expansion teams would eventually be awarded by or soon thereafter to bring it to a team league.

In protest, Davis resigned as AFL commissioner on July 25 rather than remain until the completion of the merger, and Milt Woodard was named president of the AFL, [28] [34] [35] with the "commissioner" title vacated because of Rozelle's expanded role.

The loss reinforced for many the notion that the AFL was an inferior league. Packers head coach Vince Lombardi stated after the game, "I do not think they are as good as the top teams in the National Football League.

The more experienced Packers capitalized on a number of Raiders miscues and never trailed. I think the league has always had good personnel, but the blocks were subtler and better conceived in this game.

However, on November 17, , when NBC cut away from a game between the Jets and Raiders to air the children's movie Heidi , the ensuing uproar helped disprove the notion that fans still considered the AFL an inferior product.

The Colts, who entered the contest favored by as many as 18 points, had completed the NFL season with a 13—1 record, and won the NFL title with a convincing 34—0 win over the Cleveland Browns.

Led by their stalwart defense—which allowed a record-low points—the Colts were considered one of the best-ever NFL teams. By contrast, the Jets had allowed points, the highest total for any division winner in the two leagues.

Jets quarterback Joe Namath recalled that in the days leading up to the game, he grew increasingly angry when told New York had no chance to beat Baltimore.

Three days before the game, a frustrated Namath responded to a heckler at the Touchdown Club in Miami by declaring, "We're going to win Sunday, I'll guarantee you.

Namath and the Jets made good on his guarantee as they held the Colts scoreless until late in the fourth quarter.

The Jets won, 16—7, in what is considered one of the greatest upsets in American sports history. Buffalo rookie back O. Simpson carried the ball for the last play in AFL history.

Hadl was named the game's Most Valuable Player. Prior to the start of the NFL season , the merged league was organized into two conferences of three divisions each.

To avoid having an inequitable number of teams in each conference, the leagues voted to move three NFL teams to the AFC. Motivated by the prospect of an intrastate rivalry with the Bengals as well as by personal animosity toward Paul Brown , Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell quickly offered to include his team in the AFC.

Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver Charlie Joiner , who started his career with the Houston Oilers , was the last AFL player active in professional football, retiring after the season, when he played for the San Diego Chargers.

The AFL was also the most successful of numerous upstart leagues of the s and s that attempted to challenge a major professional league's dominance.

All nine teams that were in the AFL at the time the merger was agreed upon were accepted into the league intact as was the tenth team added between the time of the merger's agreement and finalization , and none of the AFL's teams have ever folded.

For comparison, the World Hockey Association —79 managed to have four of its six remaining teams merged into the National Hockey League , which actually caused the older league to contract a franchise, but WHA teams were forced to disperse the majority of their rosters and restart as expansion teams.

The merged WHA teams were also not financially sound in large part from the hefty expansion fees the NHL imposed on them , and three of the four were forced to relocate within 20 years.

The American Basketball Association —76 managed to have only four of its teams merged into the National Basketball Association, and the rest of the league was forced to fold.

The Continental League , a proposed third league for Major League Baseball that was to begin play in , never played a single game, largely because MLB responded to the proposal by expanding to four of that league's proposed cities.

Historically, the only other professional sports league in the United States to exhibit a comparable level of franchise stability from its inception was the American League of Major League Baseball.

The NFL adopted some of the innovations introduced by the AFL immediately and a few others in the years following the merger.

One was including the names on player jerseys. The older league also adopted the practice of using the stadium scoreboard clocks to keep track of the official game time, instead of just having a stopwatch used by the referee.

The AFL played a game schedule for its entire existence, starting in The NFL, which had played a game schedule since , changed to a game schedule in , a year after the American Football League instituted it.

The AFL also introduced the two-point conversion to professional football thirty-four years before the NFL instituted it in college football had adopted the two-point conversion in the late s.

All of these innovations pioneered by the AFL, including its more exciting style of play and colorful uniforms, have essentially made today's professional football more like the AFL than like the old-line NFL.

With that first contract with ABC, the AFL adopted the first-ever cooperative television plan for professional football, in which the proceeds were divided equally among member clubs.

It featured many outstanding games, such as the classic double-overtime American Football League championship game between the Dallas Texans and the defending champion Houston Oilers.

At the time it was the longest professional football championship game ever played. Despite having a national television contract, the AFL often found itself trying to gain a foothold, only to come up against roadblocks.

The AFL took advantage of the burgeoning popularity of football by locating teams in major cities that lacked NFL franchises. Hunt's vision not only brought a new professional football league to California and New York , but introduced the sport to Colorado , restored it to Texas and later to fast-growing Florida , as well as bringing it to New England for the first time in 12 years.

Louis Football Cardinals , brought professional football back to Missouri for the first time since the temporary St. Louis Gunners of Marshall later changed his position after future-Cowboys owner Clint Murchison bought the rights to Washington's fight song " Hail to the Redskins " and threatened to prevent Marshall from playing it at games.

As a result, the Cowboys played its inaugural season in without the benefit of the NFL draft. As part of the merger agreement, additional expansion teams would be awarded by or soon thereafter to bring the league to 28 franchises; this requirement was fulfilled when the Seattle Seahawks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers began play in In addition, had it not been for the existence of the Oilers from to , the Houston Texans also would likely not exist today; the expansion team restored professional football in Houston after the original charter AFL member Oilers relocated to become the Tennessee Titans.

Kevin Sherrington of The Dallas Morning News has argued that the presence of AFL and the subsequent merger radically altered the fortunes of the Pittsburgh Steelers , saving the team "from stinking".

Constantly lacking the money to build a quality team, the Steelers had only posted eight winning seasons, and just one playoff appearance, since their first year of existence in until the end of the season.

They also finished with a record in , tied with the Chicago Bears for the worst record in the NFL. Perhaps the greatest social legacy of the AFL was the domino effect of its policy of being more liberal than the entrenched NFL in offering opportunity for black players.

While the NFL was still emerging from thirty years of segregation influenced by Washington Redskins' owner George Preston Marshall , the AFL actively recruited from small and predominantly black colleges.

The AFL's color-blindness led not only to the explosion of black talent on the field, but to the eventual entry of blacks into scouting, coordinating, and ultimately head coaching positions, long after the league ceased to exist.

The AFL's free agents came from several sources. Some were players who could not find success playing in the NFL, while another source was the Canadian Football League.

Rounding out this mix of potential talent were the true "free agents", the walk-ons and the "wanna-be's", who tried out in droves for the chance to play professional American football.

This apparently was meant to assert that the AFL could not achieve parity as long as it had to compete with the NFL in the draft. But the Jets had less than a handful of "common draftees".

Their stars were honed in the AFL, many of them since the Titans days. As noted below, the AFL got its share of stars long before the "common draft".

Both eventually were elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame after earning recognition during their careers as being among the best at their positions.

Among specific teams, the Buffalo Bills stood out by holding their opponents to a pro football record yards rushing on attempts, while also recording fifty quarterback sacks in a game schedule.

Another example is cited by the University of Kansas website, which describes the Bluebonnet Bowl , won by KU, and goes on to say "Two Kansas players, quarterback John Hadl and fullback Curtis McClinton , signed professional contracts on the field immediately after the conclusion of the game.

In , a five-part series, Full Color Football: Later, when Brown was with the Broncos, Hennigan needed nine catches in one game against the Broncos to break Lionel Taylor 's Professional Football record of catches in one season.

Hennigan caught the nine passes and broke the record, even though he was covered by Brown, Blanda's point being that if Hennigan could do so well against a Hall of Fame DB, he deserves induction, as well.

The AFL also spawned coaches whose style and techniques have profoundly affected the play of professional football to this day. As the influence of the AFL continues through the present, the 50th anniversary of its launch was celebrated during Bills' owner Ralph C.

Each of the 8 teams took part in at least two such "legacy" games. On-field officials also wore red-and-white-striped AFL uniforms during these games.

In the fall of , the Showtime pay-cable network premiered Full Color Football: The History of the American Football League , a 5-part documentary series produced by NFL Films that features vintage game film and interviews as well as more recent interviews with those associated with the AFL.

Fan favorites were the Denver Broncos ' vertically striped socks, which could not be re-stocked quickly enough. From to , the AFL determined its champion via a single-elimination playoff game between the winners of its two divisions.

The home teams alternated each year by division, so in the Jets hosted the Raiders, even though Oakland had a better record this was changed in There was no tie-breaker protocol in place, so a one-game playoff was held in War Memorial Stadium in December.

The visiting Patriots defeated the host Bills 26—8. The Patriots traveled to San Diego as the Chargers completed a three-game season sweep over the weary Patriots with a 51—10 victory.

A similar situation occurred in the season, when the Oakland Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs finished the regular season tied with identical records of 12—2 in the AFL West Division.

In , the final year of the independent AFL, Professional Football's first " wild card " playoffs were conducted. A four-team playoff was held, with the second-place teams in each division playing the winner of the other division.

The Kansas City Chiefs were the first Super Bowl champion to win two road playoff games and the first wildcard team to win the Super Bowl, although the term "wildcard" was coined by the media, and not used officially until several years later.

All-Star teams from the Eastern and Western divisions played each other after every season except That season, the league champion Buffalo Bills played all-stars from the other teams.

After numerous black players were refused service by a number of area hotels and businesses, black and white players alike called for a boycott.

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